The
concept for Chris Goode’s new show is disarmingly simple. Hippo
World is a real website. It had an online guest book in which visitors
could leave comments. In Hippo World Guest Book Chris Goode
reads out a selection of the things which were written, starting with
the first post and ending with the last, and giving a good taste of
those in between. The result is quite simply astonishing.

The
material ranges from the sweet to the outright abusive, through a good
deal of the hilariously baffling. A narrative emerges, charting the
life of the guest book from its utopian beginnings as a place where
like-minded fans of the hippopotamus leave appreciative notes thanking
the site’s mysterious creator. It moves through a period where
dissenting voices crop up to abuse hippos, other guest book signatories,
and each other, until it reaches a point where the site appears to have
been abandoned entirely by humans and the only postings are by spambots
advertising online gambling sites, and blank postings with no name.

As a performer,
Goode is both a charming stage presence and an expert interpreter of
these silent writings, at once offering characterisations of the anonymous
authors, and an implicit commentary on their outpourings. From the material,
he manages to extract long stretches of jaw-achingly funny material
and moments of strangely haunting poetry, while his honouring the internet
convention of using capitalisation to convey shouting by ACTUALLY SHOUTING
QUITE OFTEN is a masterstroke. Conversely, a section close to the end,
accompanied by some of the haunting music which is played intermittently
throughout the show, along with subtly undulating lighting states, becomes
a Prynne-like modernist poem.

How much
one gets out of the piece depends entirely on how hard one looks at
it. On a superficial level there is plenty of fun to be had just marvelling
at the gibberish people feel compelled to write on the internet. On
a slightly deeper level the piece suggests a melancholic delineation
of inevitable collapse and entropy. Beyond this, at root, there is something
intangibly beautiful and sad which lingers for far longer. This work
both demands and generously rewards proper attention. Hippo World
Guest Book is essential viewing.